Honor and Violence in the Viking Age
Daniele Bolelli recently posted about honor and violence in Renaissance Italy, and it inspired me to think about those things in other contexts. I didn’t have to think hard or long, because the historical ecosystem I live in — the Nordic world of the Viking Age — was another place rife with violence in the name of preserving honor. This predates the Italian Renaissance period by some 700 years if you count from the beginning of what we call the “Viking Age,” so the Italians were far from alone in this seemingly all-too-human trait. As they did in so many other ways, I’d say the Vikings got there first.
Legally-sanctioned violence in the name of preserving honor and the family existed throughout the Viking Age which ran from roughly the mid-8th century to around 1100 CE, only to be somewhat tamed toward the end by the introduction of Christianity and its value of “turning the other cheek.” The Icelandic sagas are full of stories of revenge in the name of honor — revenge that had to be enacted in order to save face. Surviving law codes such as the Grágás laws of Iceland also tell us of this right to avenge.
One of the most well-known sagas that includes this concept at its core is The Tale of Thorstein Staff-Struck, now available in a new English translation by my friend Jesse Byock of U.C.L.A. and the University of Iceland. At a scant six short chapters it is one of the briefest sagas to exist, but it gets the point across well.
In the story, a man named Thorstein gets into an altercation with another man at a horse fight and ends up struck in the head with a stick. Embarrassed, he asks everyone present to forget about it and not to let his father find out. But of course his father eventually finds out and pushes his son into seeking revenge because in his mind there is no other option. It’s not only the right thing to do, it’s the only thing to do. What happens next happened a lot in Viking stories, namely an escalation of violence with people getting killed. Think Hatfields and McCoys, Viking-style. When it finally comes down to a challenge of single combat between Thorstein and his opponent Bjarni to settle the matter — a challenge that in itself had to be answered in order to preserve honor — Thorstein’s father shares his thoughts with his son which perfectly sum up the Viking attitude toward these situations:
Every man can be sure to expect, if he has dealings with a more powerful man and dwells in the same district with him, and has also done him some dishonor, that he will not live to wear out many shirts. And I cannot mourn for you, because to me it seems that you have a done a great deed. Take your weapons now and defend yourself as bravely as possible. Because in my time, I would not have bowed before such a man as Bjarni, although he is the greatest champion. It seems better to me to lose you than to have a cowardly son.
That last line says it all. He would rather his son die in the act of defending his (and his family’s) honor than have him be seen as a coward. In cultures like Nordic society at the time where one’s identity was completely shaped by their family and kin network, one’s actions reflected not only on the individual, but they threw shade onto everyone they were connected to as well. Knowing this could serve to curb violence because the shame of damaging others (and incurring their wrath) perhaps made a person think twice before lashing out either verbally or physically. To live as a coward in the Viking Age was on some levels a sort of character death sentence because it was insurmountable and, for many, ultimately unbearable.
I won’t tell you how the saga ends; you can buy the book and read it for yourself. But it tells us something important about how some past cultures saw violence — or the threat of it — as an important tool for maintaining order. They actually didn’t have to resort to it all the time. As Daniele points out using the Italian context, the threat of legally-sanctioned revenge could actually result in fairly polite societies, and the Viking Age was no different. If everyone is able to maintain their honor, then peace can prevail.
Another example of how deeply embedded the concept of honor was for Vikings was the Old Norse word nið, which loosely translates into English as being the worst kind of coward that brought shame onto oneself and their family. It was one of the strongest insults a man could hurl at another. And while insulting someone didn’t necessarily have to devolve into violence, the law codes are clear that dishonoring someone by taunting, name-calling, mockery, and/or slander were all instances where the law expected the victim to prosecute. The penalties for being found guilty ranged from monetary compensation to lesser outlawry — banishment from the country for a period of time. Honor was a serious business.
And you can probably imagine that if the Vikings had a word for the most dishonorable person they had the opposite also, and you would be right. That word was drengr. A warrior or man who earned the label drengr was seen as the most honorable and admirable type of person one could be. It was certainly something to strive toward. Take a look at my friends William and Reynir’s site for a bit more information on that.
Preservation of honor was also not simply something that only Viking warriors worried about. Interestingly, in several sagas we find it’s not the men rushing to revenge for the upholding of honor so much as it is the women who goad men to such violence. Women largely did not hold positions of public power during the Viking Age, but they certainly pulled some strings from behind the scenes in order to protect their family’s honor when they felt it necessary. There may not have been many true “shieldmaidens” during the Viking Age, but the sagas certainly tell us of many more strong women who wielded softer weapons in order to protect their families. It was a more private, domestic type of power, but power it was nonetheless. It would probably be best to err on the side of politeness than tangle with those women. As the saying goes, “Hell hath no fury….” and all that.
So, you see Daniele, the cultural context that shaped you in Italy really does have a very long history indeed. I always tell my students that the Viking predilection for lashing out to save face and protect the family reminds me of the Mafia. Perhaps you’re a Viking after all ;-)
If you’re interested in more about Vikings, check out my podcast with my cohost C.J. Adrien. We talk to all kinds of scholars and write a bit ourselves as well. You’ll definitely learn a thing or two.
I love that! Thank you for this great read